Hawkeye Needs Leverage
by dragonwriter88
Summary: Clint Barton is in the middle of a favor for Phil Coulson when he meets a weird blond thief. Somehow she ends up helping him, then when they run into trouble she calls in a friend, then another one, and another. What did Barton get himself into this time? This is starting to look bad.


Author's Note: Awhile back, I posted a Leverage/X-men crossover that still makes me giggle when I reread it, so I couldn't just leave well enough alone. So here is another installment in what I call Leverage in the Marvel Universe. I hope this will bring you as much enjoyment as I had writing it. Thank you and enjoy. Also, check out the first of the series: "The Canada Job".

 **Hawkeye Needs Leverage**

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Clint Barton swore under his breath as he laid on his stomach on a random roof in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. This was supposed to be his day off, but Coulson called in a favor and here he was staking out an office building in Boston, home of the chow-dah. Not the most exotic locales for Hawkeye, though he'd been worse places. Over an hour had passed since he started his surveillance, watching the target filling out paperwork and waiting for quitting time. Unfortunately, the man was a workaholic and was still hard at work twenty minutes after everyone else left.

"Futzing office drones and their under the table money laundering," the archer groaned as he watched the balding man file one form only to pick up another one. He was going to be here all night.

"I know, right?" said a voice on his right. "I could never do that."

Hawkeye leapt to his feet, notching and drawing an arrow in one movement as he turned to face the blond woman sitting way too close to the edge. "Wh..who…how?" he blathered.

"I've tried it, being normal and stuff and it's just not for me. I mean, if I was Alice all the time, I would go insane," she continued without acknowledging the arrow pointed right at her.

"Wait, what?" Clint asked, a little baffled.

"Oh, I thought you wanted company?" the woman asked, flowing to her feet with as much grace as Nat. "I heard you talking, and figured you'd like someone to talk to."

Clint lowered his bow. Sure, Nat would scold him later for letting his guard down around a possible threat, but what she doesn't know, won't kill him. "I was just talking to myself, you know, killing time while I wait."

"While you wait for what?" she tilted her head to consider him from a different angle. His dog, Lucky did that too.

Clint shook his head. He looked around, checking his surroundings, confirming his target was still at his desk, and trying to figure out how the hell the blond had gotten up here. "I'm waiting for someone to vacate their office so I can use their computer."

"Oh! You're a thief!" she exclaimed cheerfully.

Clint groaned. "No, I'm a spy," he corrected. He had been a thief at one point, but that was a long time ago.

The woman held out her hand. "I'm Parker. I'm a thief too."

"Not a thief," Clint pointed out. He didn't take her hand and she pouted before dropping it.

"But you're going to steal something." It was not a question.

"No, that's not, well, kinda, but it's not the same. I'm a good guy," Clint defended himself.

"Me to," Parker agreed. She looked out over the surrounding roofs. "Who are you not stealing from?"

Clint sighed, Nat was going to kick his ass before giving him a lecture about trusting strangers, again. "That one, eighth floor."

"Wow, you can see that far?" she sounded impressed.

Hawkeye shrugged. "It's what I do."

She nodded and considered the distant building. She brought her fist down into the open palm of her other hand. "You know, I think you need a thief."

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Parker was a very good thief. She scouted Clint's target faster than he'd ever seen, and found them a better entrance then the one he had intended. Which of course led to them hanging from repelling harnesses (that she provided) off the side of the building, but it was better than trying to hold on to one of his grappling arrows. He provided the glass cutter and boom, they were in without crawling though miles of vents or fighting off a bunch of security guards. It kind of reminded him of some of Natasha's infiltrations.

Parker did an acrobatic swing through the open window and danced into the middle of the room. "You're clear," she whispered. Then she spotted a safe in the wall and giggled. She skipped over to it and started murmuring to it. Clint was pretty sure he had said some of the same things to women as part of his pillow talk and he decided he didn't want to listen anymore.

Instead, he went straight for the computer that held a spot of honor on the expensive antique mahogany desk. No way was this guy paying for furniture like this on his official salary, Clint thought as he sunk into the soft leather chair. But it might explain why the guy didn't feel the need to run home as soon as the clock chimed 5. Clint started the computer up and started looking for the evidence that Coulson wanted. He had been at it for only a minute when Parker appeared over his shoulder.

"Did you find it?" she hissed in his ear.

He batted her away and kept typing. She huffed in annoyance and flounced away to poke through the filing cabinets that he was pretty sure were locked just a minute ago. Even with her gone, Clint wasn't making any headway. He tried a trick that he learned from Stark, which meant he was getting desperate.

Parker was back. "Here, let me help. Hardison taught me some stuff," she demanded, pushing the archer's chair away from the desk. She tapped a couple of keys and brought up a window that looked promising but before Clint could even read it, everything disappeared behind a cartoon of a locking padlock.

"Aw, Parker, no," Clint groaned.

Parker slapped a fist into her open palm. "We need a hacker. Just a second." She pulled out her phone and started talking rapid fire into it. Clint just stared at the computer in dismay.

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Parker's hacker was a young black man named Hardison. Parker called him and directed him to the roof of their building. Clint could hear him grumbling over the phone, but he came. He did not enjoy the trip down the side of the building as much as Clint and Parker had, but he seemed willing to help as soon as he got out of Parker's harness.

Hardison apparently knew exactly who Hawkeye was. Clint was a little gratified when the guy geeked out a little and didn't call him Iron Fist. He was also as good a hacker as Parker was a thief. He cackled at the target's computer system and after plugging his own laptop in, he had full control of the whole system. Clint directed him to what Coulson wanted and they cleaned out the data bases in 15 minutes. Unfortunately, that was too long.

An alarm sounded when someone found their repelling gear on the roof, causing a lock down that was almost cliché. Metal shutters sealed the windows and the doors magnetically locked. Hardison's computer feed was also reset, leaving them cut off from the rest of the building.

"Aw, man, come on! That ain't right," Hardison complained. Hawkeye sympathized with the sentiment.

Reaching into his quiver, Clint pulled out an electrified arrow that he used to short out the magnetic lock on the door. It swung open and Hawkeye waved his accomplices out. They didn't waste time on talk, hustling to the stairwell. They closed the door just as several overly armed security guards appeared to investigate the office they had vacated. They weren't out of trouble yet, though. More guards were coming up the stairs. The three fugitives went up two flights before they found an floor that was not on lock down. They left the stairs and hid in what looked like a very nice break room. It even had a working coffee maker.

"Well, now what?" Hardison gasped, out of breath from the run up the stairs.

The hacker looked to Clint for answers and honestly, he didn't have them. If it was just him, he'd take his chances with the guards but he wasn't going to risk two civilians. "I don't know," he admitted, ready to watch the young man's respect for him disappear.

The guy laughed but didn't dismiss the hero, which was appreciated. Instead, he looked to Parker. "Well, mama?"

Parker did the now familiar fist into open palm gesture. "We need a hitter."

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Clint expected Parker and Hardison's hitter to be as good as they were. He was not expecting Eliot Spencer. In certain circles the retrieval specialist was a legend, in others he was the boogie man. Clint had moved in both circles, so he knew the fighter's reputation. But there was that one time in Bangladesh that if Eliot remembered him, might cause trouble. Luckily, that time Clint had been between bows and sporting an impressive black eye, so maybe he wouldn't make the connection.

"Do I know you?" Eliot Spencer growled as he tossed away the security guard that he had just knocked out. He glanced around to check on his friends who were drinking coffee in the corner while Hawkeye watched the door, also with coffee in hand, for camouflage of course. Considering he had just broke in through a service entrance, taken the freight elevator as high as possible and fought the rest of the way up the stairs, he looked very fresh and ready for a fight. Boy, did Clint not want to fight him.

"Nope, not me, we've never met," Clint babbled before getting a handle on his mouth. Natasha was going to laugh when he told her about this, if he told her about this. Eh, what was he kidding, he was so going to tell her about his, after a few drinks. He held out a hand. "Hawkeye," he introduced himself with as much poise as he could bring.

Eliot just grunted, but shook his hand, so Clint figured everything would be okay.

Eliot had dealt with most of the guards on his way up the stairwell, so there were only a few for Clint to shoot on the way down. The goons were just doing their jobs, so Clint stuck with net and tazer arrows rather than the pointy ones. His new friends seemed to approve and Hardison almost swooned over the tech. Clint caught Parker trying to steal one of the tazer arrows out of his quiver. She gave up only after he promised to give her one later. Elliot grumbled under his breath and rolled his eyes at her when she cheered quietly.

They reached the ground floor with little trouble, but it that was as far as they could go. There was a bunch more guards as well civilians milling around. Apparently one of the other companies in this building ran a 24-hour workforce and it was time for the shift change.

Parker turned to her friends with a mischievous grin. "We need a grifter."

Eliot growled. "Damn it, Parker."

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Parker's newest friend swept through security like a queen, or Pepper Potts. The poor men didn't know what to make of her as she started to order them around in a thick but cultured British accent with a lot of big official sounding words. Within minutes she had secured a conference room complete with a full coffee pot and an order out for pastries. Clint and his menagerie trickled in like they were expected and she greeted each of them with a cry of joy and kisses on both cheeks. The security guards who had been helping her set up for this fake meeting and keep an eye on her in the meantime were shooed out so the team could talk.

"Sophie, this is Clint," Parker explained, waving a hand at Clint. "Clint, this is Sophie."

"Nice to meet you, ma'am," Clint said, nodding politely in the woman's direction. He was a little preoccupied with cleaning his quiver. He couldn't walk past the guards with his bow and arrows on display, so Parker had stuffed a bunch of silk flowers into the quiver to disguise it. The bow had been hidden inside a roll of blue prints that Hardison had found. Clint kept a close eye on the hacker, who was still eying the specialized arrowheads. Clint did not want to be responsible for a gang of thieves getting their hands on SHIELD tech, even if he really liked them. Well, more SHIELD tech then he had already promised Parker, anyway.

"So, Parker, what is the plan?" Sophie asked, draping herself over a plush office chair.

"Well, can you get us out?" Parker asked.

Sophie sighed and shook her head. "I barely got in, Parker. I thought that you needed me inside. You should have told me that you needed an exit plan." She glanced over at Hardison, who had finally stopped hovering over Hawkeye. "From what I saw, everyone had ID badges. Can you do something about that?"

The hacker shook his head. "The cards are coded individually to each person's photo and is recorded in the computer which is not connected to the network. Without a hardline to security, I can't hack it."

"Burn scam?" Eliot asked from the door. He was listening for the guards who were posted outside. Apparently they didn't trust Sophie enough to leave them unguarded.

"Don't have the materials and we would still need IDs," Hardison shot the idea down.

"Fire alarm?" Sophie offered.

Eliot answered that one. "Not enough people to get enough panic for all of us to slip through."

"We could just punch our way out," Hawkeye pointed out, wanting to participate in the brainstorming.

Everyone looked at him with unimpressed expressions, so he dropped it and turned back to his arrows. Idly, he wondered how he ended up with them in charge of his operation. He changed his mind, he was never going to tell Nat about this.

"Enough," Parker said jumping up on the table dramatically. She clapped her hands together. "We need a master mind!"

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It looked bad, which was something Clint said a lot, but it was true every time. This time wasn't as bad as the time he was falling from the skyscraper in Mandipor, or the time he fell off the roof of his apartment building, or the time he fell off the helicarrier, or the time he…well, he fell off a lot of tall things. This was not as bad as that, but it was still bad. He was locked in a conference room, in a fake meeting, with a team of international thieves, waiting for their boss. That wasn't the bad part, unlike last time, because he liked these thieves and at least one of them was a fan. The bad part was that if they didn't figure out how to explain why they were all here, in the very secure office building, they were all going to be arrested and he didn't think his Avenger card was going to get him out of it.

Parker patted the archer's shoulder soothingly. "It will be okay, Nate will know what to do," she explained with the same cheerful attitude she had carried with her all night.

"Thanks, Parker," Clint acknowledged. "How long do you think they will let us stay here?" He jerked his head at the door, which was still guarded by two armed security guards. Sophie had tried to talk them into leaving, but they just smiled politely and said it was their job. Clint didn't buy it for a moment. They were onto them. Nate better be here soon or someone was going to call the cops.

Hardison had started a power point about stocks on the projector. He waved his hands dramatically as he explained about foreign markets and overlap loud enough for the men outside to hear. Elliot looked like he was asleep in a chair beside the door, but Clint knew better. The man was just waiting for a reason to spring into action. Parker looked like she was paying attention to the young man from her spot on top of the table, but the notes she was taking looked suspiciously like the security system for the Louvre. Sophie turned away from the hacker's presentation to answer Clint's question.

"I told them that I was on Greenwich time, so we would be running very late," she explained quietly. "That should buy us a few hours." She smiled very sweetly, but Clint knew she was acting. She was good but Natasha was better and he had learned from her.

"And this Nate you called?" Clint pressed.

"He'll be here," Sophie promised.

It took a while but Hardison finally ran out of steam and sat down with a sigh. "Who wants to talk about nothing next?" he asked.

"No need," Parker said, pulling out her phone. She crawled across the big table to wave the device in Alec's face. "Nate says he's here."

Elliot didn't open his eyes when he asked, "What's the play?"

She shrugged. "Didn't say."

Elliot grumbled under his breath but didn't ask again.

After a minute, there was a commotion outside. The doors opened to show two men in perfectly pressed suits. One Clint knew very well, the other was a stranger.

"Special Agent Coulson of the FBI," said the first man. His retreating hair line and placid demeanor hid the fact that he was one of the highest ranking agents in SHIELD and a scary BAMF when he needed to be.

Clint mouthed "FBI?" at his handler and ultimately the one responsible for this whole mess. Phil Coulson just gave him a dry look.

"Agent Sterling of Interpol," said the other man, flashing a badge with the ease of practice and the speed of a con artist. "We're here to take these people into custody."

"I'm glad you called," Coulson continued. "We've been after this team for a long time, and if you hadn't noticed something off and brought us in, well…"

"They would have made off with every secret and piece of art in the building. They've done it before."

Agent Sterling continued to stoke the guards' egos while Coulson put handcuffs on the team and Clint. Then the two "agents" gathered up all their gear including Clint's bow and Parker's repelling harnesses, and led them out in a procession. Outside, a van was idling. Clint saw a flash of red in the driver's seat and groaned. Coulson smacked the back of his head and made everyone get in the back before climbing in behind them while the other agent settled into the passenger seat.

"Buckle up," said a Russian accent from the front and the van started moving.

Clint opened his mouth to talk to Natasha, probably to apologize, but a look for Coulson shut him up for now. The drive was quiet. It took Clint a minute to figure out why. Obviously they knew Agent Sterling, but they weren't going to compromise his identity if he was under cover, not while Phil and Nat were listening. So they all sat in silence.

After a short drive, they pulled into a parking garage.

"May I have my cuffs back?" Coulson said when Natasha finished parking.

"What cuffs?" Parker asked innocently. She crossed her arms over her chest as a demonstration of her freedom.

Phil looked at her blandly until she sighed and handed them over. Clint handed his over too. Elliot growled and handed over the ones he had worn. They were a little bent, which made Coulson's eyebrows rise minutely. Sophie took a second, but eventually handed over her set of handcuffs as well, just as the back door was opened by the stranger (probably Nate) and Natasha. Hardison needed Parker's help with his, which she quickly provided.

"They were too easy," Parker complained as she grabbed her gear and hopped out of the van. She looked around. "Hey, this is our hotel."

"Our new friends agreed to drop us off," Probably Nate explained.

"You could have explained that they were on our side," Hardison griped as he checked his computer. "I thought they were really FBI. That badge looked real, man."

"They're SHIELD," Elliot barked at his teammate. "Hello, Natalia," he said sweetly to the Russian.

She flicked her long red hair behind her ear and smiled at him. "I go by Natasha, now," she replied, her accent thicker than usual. "It's been a long time, Spencer."

"Moscow?" he asked.

"Minsk," she corrected him. He nodded thoughtfully.

"Wait, that was you?" Clint squeaked, suddenly putting a lot of things together. "Futz, you screwed up my shot."

"Children," Coulson broke in. "Barton, did you get the information I sent you for?"  
Clint rolled his eyes and pulled out the flash drive that Hardison had made for him. "It's all right here, every dirty trade, bribe, and blackmail that workaholic had a hand in."

"At least you didn't jump off a building this time," Nat chided, coming over to hip check him gently.

"Well," Clint mumbled, thinking of how they got inside in the beginning.

"Why don't we head upstairs to our suite and we can talk about this," Nate Ford interrupted. "I must say, I'm curious about how all of you got involved with an Avenger."

"Parker!" Hardison, Elliot, and Sophie all said at once and pointed at the thief.

"Well, funny story," the thief started, unrepentant.

"And I can't wait to hear it," Agent Phil Coulson said, leading the way to the elevator. He looked back at his agent, who was getting a gentle talking-to in Russian from his partner. Natasha was not happy with him for needing a rescue. Not that she hesitated for a second when Phil had called her. Coulson, himself, had been very surprised to get the call from Nathan Ford claiming to need help rescuing his crew and Hawkeye. Of course SHIELD was aware of Ford's team and their Robin Hood activities. He just hadn't expected a call for his assistance in the middle of the night but he didn't begrudge his involvement, though he wondered how Ford had gotten his number. Phil knew that the archer tended to take on more than he could carry, so sometimes he needed a little… Leverage.


End file.
